Simon Raahauge DeSantis wrote:

> I've got four SPARCs (two IPX, two IPC) with non-working floppydrives. I'm
> hoping it's just choked with dust or something. Here's a sample error
> message from one of the IPCs trying to mount a DOS floppy (and I know the
> floppy is formatted correctly):
> xiamin@goethe ~ % sudo mount -tmsdos /dev/fd0c /mnt
> Password:
> fd0c: hard error reading fsbn 0 (st0 40<abnrml> st1 1<no_am> st2 0 cyl 0
> head 0
> sec 1)
> fd0c: hard error reading fsbn 0 (st0 40<abnrml> st1 1<no_am> st2 0 cyl 0
> head 0
> sec 1)
> mount_msdos: mount: Input/output error
>
> Does this mean my drive is dead or what? According to the previous owner the
> drive was working fine a month ago, so maybe it got damaged in shipping.

I had a load of problems trying to read floppies on my SS10 under Solaris and
getting NetBSD to boot from floppy.  IIRC I actually went through an ENTIRE BOX
(OK, they *were* a bit old, but still...) and every single floppy produced
errors. Formatted/read/wrote fine on my FreeBSD system on the PC. I went out
and bought a brand new box. The first two tries were duds as well. The third
floppy from the brand new box finally went OK for booting NetBSD. It seems to
me the drives on Sparcs are either *extremely* finnicky or usually full of
dust/gunge/whatever (last time I used mine was  AD 19... uh... :-) ).

My DM 0.02

Gerald

>
> --
> -Simon Raahauge DeSantis